The past year was fairly good, regarding the punk/hardcore scene in Greece. This is a small retrospect of 2006.
Gig-wise I must say that it was a great year. More than 120 punk/underground/diy gigs took place, the mass majority of which in Athens, Salonica, Kavala and fewer in Patras. These are the cities with the most active gig promotion collectives. Great part of the gigs in Athens are due to the new formed KS94 team that sets up gigs in the Underground at Kalidromiou Street 94 infoshop. Many gigs took also place Villa Amalias squat which has been organizing and hosting shows since 1990. In Salonica, Steki at Viologiko and Street Attack hosted most of the gigs, in the small city of Kavala, Accion Mutante was very active and hosted most of the foreign bands that visited Greece and finally in Patras, Porto Patrasso was responsible for most of the shows in the city. Apart from the collectives mentioned above that organize their gigs in squats and social centers, there were other promoters that organized gigs in free spaces or small clubs.
Some of the foreign bands that played this year in Greece were: Fractura, Ghost Mice, Leadershit, I Object, The Now-Denial, Jmenfous, SickTerror, Ballast, Ictus and many more.
The only bands from Greece that did some gigs abroad were the streetpunks Omihli (Fog) that did a couple of shows in Austria, the Oi! band Bootstroke that played in Bologna and Hamburg (I think) and the crusties Dyspnea which did four shows in the Balkans (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia).
During the year there were also many good releases. Straitjacket Fit released their amazing post-hc debut "#0" and one man band TUG released a double cd titled "Pehnidia Dolofonon" (Assasinators’ Games). Both releases came from the city of Patras. Valpurgia Nihta (Walpurgis Night) from Athens released their second cd "Where the rage blooms" mixing beautiful melodies and raging bursts. Censored Sound (also from Athens) released a cdep called "Feel the Pressure" (Canonball Recs) of old school hardcore. The same label also released XLOS - "From the Bottom of our Bottle" and "Walk the Plank", a 4-way split cd featuring Vodka Juniors, For What is Worth, XLOS and 925. Antidrasi (Reaction) came back from nowhere after 10 years of inactivity, featuring only a couple of the original members and released the cd "Pantu ke Puthena" (Everywhere and Nowhere). Nuclear Disaster released their debut "Nuclear War" on Punk.gr Recs. playing a mix of crust, hardcore and metal. A long waited release was the split LP of Poria sto Perithorio (Journey into Margin), from Korinthos w/ Epithanatios Roghos (Death Rattle, ex-Erimos) from Kastoria. This is the first diy vinyl release in Greece after many years and the result on both sides of the split is amazing. Good played hardcore from both bands. Another great hardcore release was Timetrap’s (ex-Timetrap Surfers) "Waiting for the Unexpected" and of course the long waited compilation that was released as a result of the collaboration of various music collectives in Greece "Diataraksi Kinis Sinidisis". Some more releases this year were Enzimo – s/t (Enzyme, kinda indie, unique sound not easy to be labeled, from Patras), Toxica Apovlita - Katevase to (Toxic Waste – Download It, punk, ska, hardcore), Dihasmenes Alithies – Potise me Ipervoles (Divided Truths: rap-metal, hardcore from Salonica), Ysteria – Roz (Hysteria – Pink, punk from Alexandroupoli), Apanthropi Fili’s first demo and Psiharmonika - Mahnatan (nu-metal like-hardcore from Alexandroupoli as well). There were also three releases of experimental/noise/eletropunk/trance or something like that: "KGB - Mavro Provato" (Black Sheep), "Dadayfh Pornostroika – I polis tis kokinis nihtas" (The city of the red night) and "Ai Giannis – 1+1 2006".